


you’ll find me (if you want me) in the garden

by chahakyn



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, GLaDOS kicks you out but secretly wants you back, POV Second Person, Portal 2 Spoilers, Post-Portal 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24611386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chahakyn/pseuds/chahakyn
Summary: you agree to stay at aperture science, but on one condition: you can have plantsa story of how chell grows the best garden aperture science has ever seen and how GLaDOS learns to tolerate organic matter (as much as she can)
Relationships: Chell/GLaDOS
Comments: 19
Kudos: 157





	1. Seedling

You look out at the blindingly bright scenery laid out before you, eyes squinting to adjust to the natural sunlight you haven’t seen in years. The land goes on for miles, as far as you can see, covered in flora and fauna. You desperately want to run your hands through the grass, your hand stretching out to do so.

The door to the shed behind you flings open again. You half expect something like a companion cube to be hurled out at you before it slams shut again, closing on this chapter of your life. Instead, the door stays open. You can’t really see inside, but it feels like you’re being watched.

“I said you could go. I don’t want you here. Why aren’t you running off to live your sad, little life?” GLaDOS’ tone of voice is unimpressed. But there’s something buried there, something you can’t quite place your finger on.

You frown as you consider the dark interior of the shed. This is your chance to go. She’s not stopping you from leaving this sterile hellhole, this prison. You’re free. You take a tentative step, and then another. But then you stop.

You don’t want to go.

Aperture Science is not the…best place to be. It’s an endless expanse of pristine white panels, searing lasers, unwavering light beams arcing across pits of toxic water. It’s full of beady-eyed turrets, waiting for your one misstep to be your last, full of dark, dangerous secrets buried deep in the bowels of the facilities, both old and new. It’s full of things that want to you dead.

But it’s full of so many things you’ve grown to love too. That exhilaration you feel when you first step into a new test chamber, your mind running a mile a minute as you take everything in and calculate what you need to solve the puzzle. The weight of the portal gun in your hand, readily molding reality to fit your needs. You even love the frustration of a mental block, the senseless pacing you do as you try to make sense of a particularly mind-boggling puzzle. You love it because when you break through to the solution, the result is even sweeter. That intoxicating sense of success when you land at the exit, a completed test chamber left in your wake, and the doors smoothly sliding open as though they have been waiting to welcome you; there’s nothing like it.

Even GLaDOS, you’ve grown to love. Her toneless voice, her sharp and witty remarks, her commitment to science, her unwavering dedication to an institution that has treated her infinitely worse than she ever deserved. You’ve barely taken three steps outside Aperture Science and you already miss it, miss _her_. There’s already so much for you here, more than you know you’ll ever find out there. Really, the only thing that you know you’d miss if you went back inside would be…

You whirl around, looking at the land surrounding you. It’s covered in plants of all shapes and kinds. Wildflowers, fruit trees, grass, fungi. You have an idea. You turn back to the entrance of Aperture Science, looking directly into the darkness. You know that GLaDOS is there, staring back.

“What. You want to come back in just to kill me again? I won’t fall for it, you know. I don’t need you anymore. I told you, I have robots who can test.” She sounds almost…sullen that she’s found your replacements. She sounds like she misses you.

You can’t help the grin that splits open on your face. You point at yourself, and then wave your hand in a grand sweep behind you, gesturing to the land. You point at the land, drawing a line from it to the gaping hole of Aperture Science.

“Please, I don’t understand your primitive gestures.”

You roll your eyes, kneeling down to pull a few stalks of grass from the ground. You lift them in the air, pointing at them, and then at her as you let go of the grass, letting it fall to the floor.

“You want to rip me from my roots and let me fall to the ground, dead,” she guesses in a deadpan voice. You shake your head vehemently and gesture at yourself and back at the plants on the land before jabbing your finger harder at Aperture Science, pointing at her.

“You…you want to stay and bring that into the facilities?”

You light up, nodding as you gesture again.

“Why? I don’t NEED you anymore. Why would I let you come back? And if I somehow lost my mind and let you come back, I would never let you bring that in. It’s wet and dirty and messy…” GLaDOS trails off.

Your grin turns a bit mischievous as you bend down to grab a handful of grass and dirt, running to the entrance to fling it into the facility.

“No! NO! Get that OUT of here!” A panel rises from the darkness, tilting itself down and out to sweep the organic matter out of the building.

“Are you doing this just to torment me, you monster?”

You shake your head.

“I will NOT let that repulsive material come into my facilities. I have already had to deal with enough disgusting organic matter, I’m not taking on any others. That organic matter is you, by the way, if you didn’t catch that.”

You exhale quietly, looking out towards the field. Looking at new life is such a refreshing difference compared to the barren insides of the facilities. Blank, lifeless panels line the walls, and it all feels too clean. The only things you find marring that cleanliness are the frenzied scribbles and drawings hidden behind walls, deep in the premises. But those discoveries are few and far in between, and not nearly enough to keep you satisfied. The testing chambers of Aperture Science are your home. But it’s missing something, something more like you. Of course, you’d never want another human there. You thought you did, at first, but now the idea of sharing GLaDOS’ attention feels…wrong.

You remember exploring the “back alleys” of Aperture Science with Wheatley as your guide. Seeing your wild, overgrown potato plant remaining from the last “Bring Your Daughter to Work Day” centuries ago had made a pang of sadness shoot through your chest. But it’d also somehow been a ray of hope, seeing organic matter take over the seemingly untouchable Aperture Science.

Also, having some new oxygen in the facility had really been a breath of fresh air.

“Fine. FINE. You can come back. Bring some of that filth in and I’ll see what I can do.”

You twist back to face the shed, watching as a few storage cubes tumble out of the dark hole, their tops popping off to reveal empty interiors, free of weight. A scrap piece of metal somewhat resembling a trowel comes sailing out after. You pick it up, turning it over in your hands. It looks suspiciously like a defective turret leg.

“You just ALWAYS have to make my life incredibly difficult, don’t you?”

You glance up at the dark interior of your shed, raising an eyebrow.

“No, I’m not doing this because I CARE about you, you idiot,” she snaps, “I’m doing this because I need some variability in my test chambers, to make sure that my experiments are held to both human and robot standards. It’s good science. Bringing plants into the facility is NOT good science, but if you stay here and keep testing with that disgusting look of disappointment on your face, both of our productivity levels are going to hit rock bottom VERY fast.”

You smile, a rush of satisfaction filling your heart. You turn out towards the field, ideas and plans rushing through your mind at a breakneck speed. You stop though, turning to look at GLaDOS with a straight face, holding up your hands curved together in a vaguely oval shape. You raise your hands in that shape before pointing at her.

“I don’t understand your hand-signing gibberish. Enlighten me.”

You point at the ground, miming pulling the oval shape from the ground before pointing insistently at her. You can feel the second it hits her, that you’re making a joke about growing potatoes just to antagonize her. You can imagine her cocking her head in irritation, and you know if she had a mouth, she would be scowling something fierce right now. You grin.

“If a single potato comes anywhere near this facility, I will blow it all up. All of it. Even you, because I hate potatoes. I also hate you. Just so you know.”

\---

The corner of your room becomes your garden. You check up on them every morning before testing, and you sit with them at night, after testing and before bed. Unlike everything else in this facility, the plants are silent. They don’t squeak or groan or chatter like the turrets. They also don’t hurl insults at you daily like GLaDOS (but you don’t mind that as much as you used to). Their silence is comforting in their own way.

And honestly, it’s a relief to come back to something that’s yours at the end of the day. You’ve learned to accept Aperture Science as an integral part of your life. But it’s not the same. The test chambers, the shifting panels, GLaDOS, even your portal gun. None of it is for you. But now, you have something. Your plants stand silent, tall, and proud; they are undeniably _yours_.

They also function surprisingly well for living in a facility with no natural light. You water them with the water bottle that has stayed on your nightstand since the beginning, full to the brim every morning without fail. You note after a few days that the original bottle has been replaced with a larger one, now holding enough water to water your plants as well as hydrate yourself.

Time passes in a blur of testing and plant care, and then one day, you notice the wildflowers are starting to encroach on your basil. You decide it’s time for a change. Repotting, to be more specific. Sneaking a few more weighted storage cubes out of the testing chambers isn’t easy. But you haven’t survived this long in a cutthroat science testing facility just to be deterred by Emancipation Grills.

You store them in your room until you have enough, and then you get to work. Popping their tops off, pulling out the weighted insides, and then working to transfer dirt and plants into their new “pots”. It’s messier than you anticipate; you have no problem with that.

But of course, GLaDOS does.

“What have you DONE?”

You look up from your plants at the camera, wiping your cheek with the back of your hand. Dirt smears across your face, and you can imagine GLaDOS’ eyepiece dilating at the grime. You tilt your head, an innocent expression on your face.

“It’s filthy,” she hisses.

It is. But it’s wonderful. You grow things, coaxing them out of these open storage cubes. Small herb plants, bright wildflowers, young fruit trees, twisting vines that climb desperately towards the lights on the ceiling, covering the pristine white panels. The number of storage cubes in your room grows and grows, until there is barely enough room to navigate from the door to your bed.

GLaDOS notices, never failing to remark on it.

“Your room is covered in plants,” she says, voice carrying a hint of disdain. "I can’t even tell where you are.”

You poke your head out from behind a stack of companion cubes wrapped with climbing vines of wisteria.

“Oh. There you are.”

You give a little wave, turning back to pruning the wisteria. It grows at a rather alarming pace, prompting you to trim it back at least once a day.

“Why do you bother? The room is already a disaster, how will trimming help?”

You poke your head out again, rolling your eyes at the camera.

“Don’t you have more important things to do? Like testing?” GLaDOS tries to sound bored, but she can’t hide the tiniest tinge of excitement in her voice. She must have a new layout she wants you to test. You sigh and stand, weaving your way slowly around the plants lining your floor. You nearly trip over a cube of mint, managing to catch your balance at the last second.

“Oh, this is RIDICULOUS.”

There is a whirring noise and a few consecutive crashes beyond the walls of your room, followed by the facility giving a violent shudder. You cock your head. She must be changing the layout of the neighboring room that houses the first test you solved when you woke up all those years ago. She’s reformatted all the other test chambers to be more difficult and challenging, but this one she’s always kept the same. How uncharacteristically sentimental of her.

“Well, are you just going to stand there like an oaf and not appreciate what I’ve just done for you?”

You glance up at the camera before picking up your portal gun from the bed. You easily navigate from your room to the neighboring chamber, surveying the new layout.

The room is much, much bigger than before, with a ceiling made of textured glass that lets a wonderful amount of artificial light in. The cube dispenser that was attached to the old ceiling is gone. But the weight-sensitive button to open the door is still there, now in the center of the room. Other than that, the room is bare.

“Well? It’s a room. For your plants. So I don’t have to look at them when I check your room to find you for testing. Happy?”

You spin in a circle, taking in the room again as your face bursts into a smile. A whole _room_ , just for the plants. This is perfect.

“Note that this is for my sanity, not yours. Move your plants in before you come test, I’m sick of seeing them.”

You smile as you step back into your portal, already planning in your head where you want everything to go. The move goes smoothly, and you’re incredibly grateful for the space. You can finally navigate to your bed with minimal fuss; though, you do keep a plant or two by your bed. It makes you feel good. But after the move, you run into a problem: the room is too big. Your plants grow at a good pace, but they’re too slow. The herbs and wildflowers and small fruit plants do alright, but the fruit trees are seedlings, barely increasing in size week to week. At this rate, you’re going to die before your peach tree gets anywhere close to producing fruit.

But of course, you have an idea to fix that. You walk up to the camera one day, waving your hand.

“What?”

You point at your peach tree, miming its growth in height with your hand.

“Yes, it’s grown. Do you want a reward? You should know, you don’t deserve a reward. That plant did all the work,” GLaDOS says.

You shake your head, repeating the gesture but reaching higher this time.

“You want it…to grow bigger. Congratulations, you’ve discovered the basic tenets of plant growth.” Her slow clap processor clicks in, the clipped applause echoing in the large room. “It will grow. With time. As I’m sure you understand.”

You shake your head again in frustration, tapping your wrist in the approximation of a watch before gesturing with your arms, holding them out a fair distance from each other before pushing them together to close the gap.

“You want them to grow faster?”

You nod, pointing at the camera. At GLaDOS.

“And have more plants encroaching on the facility? No, no, I will NOT help them grow faster. Deal with their slow pace on your own, maybe it’ll teach you some patience.”

You tilt your head, giving her a considering look. And then you repeat the entire set of motions again, making sure to raise your eyebrow when you point at her before giving a mocking shrug. You want desperately to convey to her that you think she’s backing out because she can’t do it. Of course, you _know_ she can do it. She could probably do it in her sleep. But she won’t do it, unless it’s a challenge. You desperately hope she takes it as a challenge.

There’s a series of electronic noises, like a machine fritzing out, tones and noises meshing together. You’re confused, until you realize that mish-mash of sound is GLaDOS’ voice generator sputtering with outrage. She’s _furious_.

“How—how DARE you assume I couldn’t do something as simple, as rudimentary as a growth serum for plants? I’ll do it, I’ll SHOW you what I can do!”

Your eyes widen as you nod, quickly dragging the cube holding the peach tree over to place on the weighted door button. You don’t quite scramble out of the room, but you quickly stroll away, hoping not to incur any more of her wrath. You meekly make your way to a new test chamber, entering it and working through the puzzle with all of your focus. The best thing you can do now is placate her by finishing a few chambers and then acting contrite for the rest of the night, as you let her cool down.

The next morning, you tentatively make your way to the plant room, taking stock of your vegetation as you go around, pruning and watering. You stop at the peach tree, jaw nearly dropping open as you take in its new size. It’s grown two feet since you last saw it yesterday.

“It’s still scrawny despite my work. But that’s a testament to your shoddy effort, not mine,” she says coolly, noticing you staring at it.

You whip around to face the camera, smiling so wide your cheeks hurt.

“Oh, don’t do that, you look stupid. And don’t expect me to keep working on it, either. These things are hardly MY problem.”

And yet, despite her words, she keeps working on them.

Your plants begin to grow at breakneck speeds. But that’s not the only thing that changes. Flowers bloom faster, and stay that way for weeks with minimal watering, defying all laws of nature. Trees grow to towering heights at rapid speeds, bearing just the right amount of fruit so that they don’t rot before you can finish them. Seasons are rendered moot, flora and fauna blooming all the time. It’s amazing, better than you thought it ever could be.

Your peach tree bears fruit first. You pick the first one, turning it over in your hands as you marvel at its size and plumpness. You don’t eat it, though. Instead, you walk towards the camera at the edge of the room, waving the peach at it before setting it carefully on the ground.

“You can’t just set a fruit on the ground and expect it to grow. I thought you understood how these things worked by now.” GLaDOS’ voice, while still monotone, carries the slightest hint of exasperation.

You shake your head, nudging it forward with your finger before pointing at the camera.

“You’re defying my expectations by somehow being stupider than I thought. I can’t eat that,” she says, slowly.

You shrug, nudging it closer before turning back to your plants. When you turn back around, the peach is gone. Neither of you say anything about it, but you like to think GLaDOS was touched by your gesture. As touched a robot can be.

She must have some stakes in it after all, since she doesn’t stop working to improve the garden. She keeps tinkering with new formulas and leaving out tools that function better than the ones you’ve cobbled together from scrap metal pieces. She’s even taken to setting out already empty storage cubes for when you want to repot certain things.

It’s also become sort of a ritual for her to join you in the morning when you look over the greenery, telling you about the changes she’s made to formulas. She always tries to keep her tone at the most disdainful level possible when discussing anything involving the plants, but sometimes she forgets and all you can hear in her voice is exhilaration at the process of solving puzzles of her own. She treats improving your plants like you treat her exercises. Careful, thoughtful, and with just a little bit of risk from time to time. The process with which you both work is nearly the same, except your plants are much slower to work with and aren’t nearly as dangerous as her exercises. Most of the time.

The one day her growth formula somehow makes the cherries release toxic spores into the air is one of the more dangerous occurrences. You step into the plant room and immediately fall to the floor, chest heaving as you try desperately to draw in oxygen. Your world narrows down to the painful effort of breathing, lungs refusing to function. The last thing you hear before you pass out is GLaDOS’ almost panicked voice, muffled in your ears. The first thing you hear when you wake up is also her voice, berating you for being such a stupidly fragile human. In both instances, it’s infinitely more comforting than you ever thought her voice could be.

The next time you cautiously step into the plant room, you’re surprised to see some changes. Most notably, a giant screen on the wall next to the fruit trees. GLaDOS is projected onto it, scrutinizing you with a look.

“Well, after your little escapade of almost DYING, I decided some changes had to be made. Improvements. About time too, your unsophisticated set-up was just waiting to blow up in your face.”

She goes on to rattle out the changes she’s made. The giant screen so she can keep a better eye on you (though, there aren’t any new cameras; it doesn’t quite make sense, but you brush it off since you don’t mind seeing her a little more). An extension of the plant room that can be closed off, for keeping vegetation new chemical concoctions are being tested on isolated from the other plants. Strategically placed air vents that cycle new oxygen from the plants into the regular air system, a double benefit in that the facility’s recycled air will be a little fresher now and any future toxic spores will quickly be redirected away from you and into the filtration system.

She sounds almost…anxious as she lists these changes to you. Nervous, as if that whole event had truly rattled her and she wants to make up for it. Of course, she doesn’t apologize for her mistake out loud. But you can feel her apology written in every thoughtful change she’s made to keep you safe. It warms your heart.

You look up at the screen when she finishes her speech, nodding and giving her a thumbs up as you smile. GLaDOS tilts her head.

“I wasn’t asking for your approval, you philistine,” she sniffs. “I was merely making logical improvements to this mess. Making things better. As I am programmed to do.”

You shrug, giving her another warm smile. She has your approval, regardless.


	2. Flowering

Sometimes, GLaDOS misses things in her test chambers. It’s incredibly rare, but she can overlook a minute detail when designing a room. You relish these moments when you find her mistakes, always taking advantage of them by escaping the test chamber to explore Aperture Science even more. You’re already fairly familiar with the premises as well as the old facility beneath it, but it’s still fun to explore. It can be dangerous, like when some of the metal bridges end over a dizzyingly high drop into nothingness, or when you can’t find a way out of an older test chamber because the portal-able surfaces have worn down enough that they’re useless to you. But that’s half the fun of it all, the challenge of fighting for your life.

You know it rankles GLaDOS when you leave the test chambers, but she doesn’t stop you. She sees your deviation from the beaten path less as an impertinence and more as a lesson to learn from. The time between each mistake you find stretches longer and longer as time goes by. She learns quickly, and she’s very good at fixing things. But she’s not perfect.

Today, nearly four months after your last “escape”, you find another mistake.

You’re launching yourself in the air, in the middle of navigating through one of GLaDOS’ newer tests, when you spot it. A little chink in the armor of the test chamber, just large enough that you can see the telltale white wall on the other side. You land nimbly on a flat surface and turn to study the opposite side of the room, ignoring the opening.

You can’t let it show when you’ve found an out. If you’re too obvious, GLaDOS will catch on and comb through the room even more carefully than she normally does. And when she does that, the chances of the mistake surviving are incredibly slim.

You shoot a few experimental portals on the wall you’re staring at, weighing your options on how to exploit this opportunity. You quickly decide and proceed to work your way back to the entrance, snagging a cube along the way to make the journey more convincing. You start your trip, eyes avoiding the opening as you stroll onto the launching pad. Suddenly dropping the cube while midair, you aim a careful portal at the spot, lightning fast; it hits its mark. _Bingo_. You shoot the accompanying portal onto the floor you are about to land on, sliding neatly into the portal and out into a deserted hallway.

A muffled groan sounds from GLaDOS’ speaker in the test chamber. You grin to yourself. Not taking the chance to find out what she has to say, you quickly make you way down the hallway and deep into the insides of Aperture Science. You wander around aimlessly, enjoying the freedom of exploring, when you realize the direction you’ve been heading in is taking you towards the Employee Daycare Center. It’s a familiar route, your footsteps tracing the path you once took with Wheatley, his flashlight illuminating your path.

You shrug and let memory guide you back to the abandoned classroom. Meandering over to the ancient science presentations, you look up at the towering potato plant, admiring your handiwork from all those years ago. An idea suddenly strikes. You look around before clambering up the heavy stalks of the plant, snapping a small branch off. You stuff it in the waistband of your tied-up jumpsuit, praying that it’ll take root in the dirt as you leave make your way back into the side corridors of Aperture Science. Running through your memories of the layout, you decide to take a trip back to the Turret Manufacturing area. Maybe you’ll mess around with the turret production, just to see if GLaDOS notices.

You make it there in quick time, hopping around platforms just for the fun of it. You stop near the incineration conveyor belt as your eyes catch on something you hadn’t expected: a mechanical creature, one of the turret-companion combination cubes that Wheatley had built in a useless attempt to replace you. You hop onto the slow conveyor belt and pick it up, examining it in your grip. It shivers, blinking up at you with large, innocent eyes. It makes you think back to that turret you saved off of this conveyor belt what seems like a century ago. The words it had spouted in its sing-song voice had been unsettling, but you still remember it with some fondness. That fondness wrenches in your gut now, stopping you from just putting the box creature back on its path to destruction.

You glance at the fire before tucking the creature more securely under your arm, making your way back to your room. It’s a little more difficult than normal; the cube’s weight is unwieldy, throwing you off-balance as you make dangerous leaps across shaky metal bridgework. But, despite how much harder you have to work, you still can’t bring yourself to put the cube down. Eventually, you make it back to your room, portal-ing in from the abandoned hallway on the other side of the wall.

“You’re finally back.” GLaDOS greets you, a hint of glumness in her voice. You’d feel bad, but you know she’ll bounce back in a bit. She’s probably already planning the next test chamber in her head. Maybe if she throws some turrets in, you’ll let yourself get a little beat up; half the fun of a test chamber sometimes is putting on a show for GLaDOS, struggling a bit for her entertainment before ultimately pulling through. It’s a little weird if you think too much about it, but you don’t really mind. You’ve certainly done weirder things for science, and a somewhat satisfied GLaDOS is never a bad thing.

You wave at the camera and portal into the plant room, the box creature still tucked under your arm. You land in the room and kneel down, setting it onto the floor. Out of the corner of your eye, GLaDOS tilts her head onscreen.

“Oh. I thought I got rid of all of those.” Her voice is monotone, normal and detached. But you can hear the hint of irritation beneath it, a lingering anger at Wheatley still simmering under the surface. You frown as a one of the ceiling panels removes itself to let a giant claw slide into the room, beelining for the box creature. It scuttles away as quickly as it can at the sight of the claw, hiding itself behind a camellia bush’s cube.

You stand in front of the camellia bush and shake your head, giving the camera a look.

A put-out sigh rattles through the speaker. “Why do you even want it? It can’t do anything, it’s effectively useless. A waste of space. One of those around here is more than enough.” She pauses. “I meant you, in case that flew over your head.”

You roll your eyes, holding up your portal gun with a raised eyebrow.

“Any idiot can use a portal gun,” GLaDOS says flippantly. You frown, looking up at ceiling where the claw is emerging. A flash of white catches your eye; sitting beyond the gap, there’s another portal-able surface decently far away, above the room. You’d raise your eyebrow in surprise if you weren’t so used to hiding your emotions in the face of an out. Two mistakes in one day? GLaDOS must be losing her touch.

You furtively snag your old trowel, the defective turret leg, from where it’s stuck in the dirt, and jam it in the back of your waistband before stepping forward, as if to approach the screen GLaDOS is projected on. Instead of walking any further, however, you glance up and quickly shoot a portal through the gap outside of the room. You shoot another portal beneath yourself in quick order, feeling your stomach drop as gravity takes over and pulls you down. You look down as you fall, taking in your surrounding and breathing a sigh of relief as you realize you won’t be falling down into the endless depths of the facility. Sometimes, your quick plans aren’t as well thought-out, and you have to scramble to stay alive. But, again, fighting for your life is the name of the game at Aperture Science.

You land hard on the outside surface of your room, fall boots taking the hit. Quickly pulling the old turret leg out, you jam it deep into the critical first joint of the claw. It lets out a deep groan, sparks showering out from the point of contact as the joint grinds against the metal intrusion. You give a couple more shoves, just to make sure it’s well and truly stuck in there, before sliding through the hole in the ceiling, landing lightly on the ground of the garden room. You look up at GLaDOS and hold up the portal gun again, eyebrow raised.

“There’s no need to destroy things to prove your point,” she snaps, clearly annoyed at your success. You shrug and point back at the box creature, still cowering under the bushes, as you shake your head again, vehemently.

“FINE. That monstrosity can stay. But if it gets in my way, it’s gone.” With that, the claw shakily retracts, the ceiling panel is replaced, and her display screen shuts off for the first time, leaving you alone in the room. Well, not really alone. Just because the screen has been shut off doesn’t mean the camera is off. Still, if she’s removing your ability to see her on-screen, she must be _really_ upset.

You shrug and turn to check on the flowers, leaving the box creature alone to watch you. With your back turned to the camera, you surreptitiously slide the potato sprout from your jumpsuit waistband, nestling it between tomato plants with a small smile. You wonder how long it’ll take GLaDOS to catch it. She’ll probably find it within the day, but you can’t say you didn’t try.

You finish your rounds with the plants and turn to leave the room, stopping as you hear a panicked chirp from the behind the bushes. You step back over and watch the box creature scamper towards you as fast as its legs can carry it (which isn’t very fast). Taking pity on it, you scoop it up in your arms, watching it tremble for a moment before you carry it into your own room. You set it down next to your bed and watch as it backs itself into the corner between your bed and the nightstand. Whatever Wheatley did to it, it’s still scared out of its mind; it’ll take time to get used to you.

And it does take a lot of time. It’s almost three weeks later before you can pick the creature up without it quivering in your arms. You count that as a win, even though it’s still terrified of GLaDOS, running away to hide in the plants the second it sees her on-screen. She’s taken to calling it the “Frankenturret”, the contempt in her voice palpable. But she leaves the box creature alone, thankfully. The garden, however, is another story. The potato plant disappears in less than a day, and the chemical concoctions get wilder and more creative as time goes on. You have to talk GLaDOS down more than once from trying to break too many rules of nature (“You have the wonders of science at your fingertips thanks to me and you _still_ confine yourself to small-minded restraints of fruit size? Give me a good reason as to why your apples SHOULDN’T be the size of beach balls and then, maybe, I’ll consider holding back.”).

Sometimes, you think a little about what your life would have been if you hadn’t stayed. A life outside of Aperture Science with other people and animals, organic food, a job, an apartment. Or maybe there’s nobody left on the surface. Maybe there would only be broken-down vehicles at the sides of the roads, decrepit, abandoned buildings overgrown with plants, not another human or animal in sight under an endless, pale blue sky. Would you have been satisfied with whatever you found aboveground? Probably.

But then you think of the box creature, scampering up to you before following you around the room, begging with its eyes to be set in the hydrangea’s cube so it can poke at the dirt. You think of the test chambers you work through every day, pushing your mind and the laws of science further than anybody ever thought they could be pushed. Puzzles filled with portals, gels, and other things that would never be seen outside of the facilities. And GLaDOS. You think of her hard work on helping your plants grow despite how much she says she hates them. Her consideration for you, despite her constant, vehement denial of its existence.

You think of these things all the time. Especially at the end of the day, when you travel back to your room after a long, hard day of jumping through portals and landing so hard on the floor you can feel your teeth rattle in your mouth. When you’re exhausted and frustrated with your progress through test chambers or with the health of some rather stubborn plants. You remember all the good things you have here, the things you care about waiting for you at the end of each struggle.

And you know, in your heart, this is all more than enough for you.

**Author's Note:**

> the fact that the towering potato plant you find at the "bring your daughter to work day" part of portal 2 is indeed chell's project is so fricking cool!! also gosh i love GLaDOS, what a gal
> 
> come find me on [ tumblr](https://shizuoi.tumblr.com/) if you want to talk more!


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